Women – Precious Jewels

In Calcutta, every few meters on the boulevard, are signs fastened to metal poles and scores of bigger-than-life billboards featuring glamorous women highly decorated in jewels and gold.

Their alluring smiles and ecstatic countenance as if to display a sense of happiness, fulfillment, makes me wonder what would happen if those signs were replaced with ones that speak of female feoticide and infanticide, of the dowry murders that plague India. Would it prompt women to long for the life, freedom, and power of themselves over the ephemeral pleasure that their jewels bring? How is it, I ask myself, that what a woman decorates herself with is more important than her safety, her liberty, her life?